Finite element analysis for building assessment : Advanced use and practical recommendations
Existing structures represent a heterogeneous category in the global built environment as often characterized by the presence of archaic materials, damage and disconnections, uncommon construction techniques and subsequent interventions throughout the building history. In this scenario, the common linear elastic analysis approach adopted for new buildings is incapable of an accurate estimation of structural capacity, leading to overconservative results, invasive structural strengthening, added intervention costs, excessive interference to building users and possible losses in terms of aesthetics or heritage values. For a rational and sustainable use of the resources, this book deals with advanced numerical simulations, adopting a practical approach to introduce the fundamentals of Finite Element Method, nonlinear solution procedures and constitutive material models.
Financing clean energy access in Sub-Saharan Africa : Risk mitigation strategies and innovative financing structures
This book analyses barriers and challenges associated with the financing of clean energy access in sub-Saharan Africa. By considering various economic, financial, political, environmental and social factors, it explores the consequences of energy poverty across the region and maps the real and perceived investment risks for potential capital providers, both domestic and international. Furthermore, it analyses risk mitigation strategies and innovative financing structures available to the public and private sectors, which are aimed at leveraging capital in the clean energy sector at scale and fostering the creation of an enabling business and investment environment.
Financial Modeling Under Non-Gaussian Distributions
Practitioners and researchers who have handled financial market data know that asset returns do not behave according to the bell-shaped curve, associated with the Gaussian or normal distribution. Indeed, the use of Gaussian models when the asset return distributions are not normal could lead to a wrong choice of portfolio, the underestimation of extreme losses or mispriced derivative products. Consequently, non-Gaussian models and models based on processes with jumps are gaining popularity among financial market practitioners.
Financial crisis management and democracy : Lessons from Europe and Latin America
This book discusses financial crisis management and policy in Europe and Latin America, with a special focus on equity and democracy. Based on a three-year research project by the Jean Monnet Network, this volume takes an interdisciplinary, comparative approach, analyzing both the role and impact of the EU and regional organizations in Latin America on crisis management as well as the consequences of crisis on the process of European integration and on Latin America’s regionalism.
Filgrastim in clinical oncology : Guarding against neutropenia
Granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (G-CSF) has driven the attention of researchers as a therapeutic agent for curing patients suffering from neutropenia. Despite the successful use of G-CSF, it currently requires daily injections, which are inconvenient, expensive, and distressing for children. Therefore, an alternative strategy for using G-CSF for treatment is needed. Understanding the G-CSF structure, expression, mechanism of action, and how it induces neutrophils mobilization is crucial to producing promising cancer therapy. The ability of G-CSF to mobilize hematopoietic stem cells from the bone marrow into the blood circulation was consequently exploited and altered the practice of hematopoietic stem cell transplantation.
Field and Service Robotics ; Vol. 24 : Recent Advances in Research and Applications
This unique collection is the post-conference proceedings of the 4th FSR in Lake Yamanaka, Japan at July 2003. This book edited by Shin’ichi Yuta, Hajime Asama, Sebastian Thrun, Erwin Prassler and Takashi Tsubouchi is rich by topics and authoritative contributors and presents the current developments and new directions in field and service robotics. The contents of these contributions represent a cross-section of the current state of robotics research from one particular aspect: field and service applications, and how they reflect on the theoretical basis of subsequent developments. Pursuing technologies aimed at realizing skilful, smart, reliable, robust field and service robots is the big challenge running throughout this focused collection.
Fault-Tolerance Techniques for SRAM-Based FPGAs
This book discusses fault-tolerance techniques for SRAM-based Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs). It starts by showing the model of the problem and the upset effects in the programmable architecture. In the sequence, it shows the main fault tolerance techniques used nowadays to protect integrated circuits against errors. A large set of methods for designing fault tolerance systems in SRAM-based FPGAs is described. Some presented techniques are based on developing a new fault-tolerant architecture with new robustness FPGA elements. Other techniques are based on protecting the high-level hardware description before the synthesis in the FPGA.
Fatigue Science for Human Health
Fatigue is quite a familiar sensation, one that everyone is likely to have experienced. Its molecular and neural mechanisms have not yet been elucidated, however, probably because of the complicated nature of its causes. To provide a broad forum for discussion, the International Conference on Fatigue Science was organized, the first being held in 2002 in Sandhamn, Sweden, and the second in 2005 in Karuizawa, Japan. Subsequently it was decided that the papers presented at the two conferences should be collected and incorporated in this pioneering work, Fatigue Science for Human Health. The book summarizes fatigue researchers' achievements, explains the status of the research on fatigue, and presents perspectives on remedies for chronic fatigue and chronic fatigue syndrome. The result is an authoritative guide to recent progress in the molecular and neural mechanisms of fatigue and in the development of the ways to prevent and overcome fatigue and chronic fatigue.
Fast software encryption ; Vol. 4047 ; 13th international workshop, FSE 2006, Graz, Austria, March 15-17, 2006, Revised Selected Papers
Fast Software Encryption (FSE) 2006 is the 13th in a series of workshops on symmetric cryptography. It has been sponsored for the last ?ve years by the International Association for Cryptologic Research (IACR), and previous FSE workshops have been held around the world: 1993 Cambridge, UK 1994 Leuven, Belgium 1996 Cambridge, UK 1997 Haifa, Israel 1998 Paris, France 1999 Rome, Italy 2000 New York, USA 2001 Yokohama, Japan 2002 Leuven, Belgium 2003 Lund, Sweden 2004 New Delhi, India 2005 Paris, France The FSE workshop is devoted to research on fast and secure primitives for symmetric cryptography, including the design and analysis of block ciphers, stream ciphers, encryption schemes, analysis and evaluation tools, hash fu- tions, and message authentication codes.
Fast software encryption ; 15th International Workshop, FSE 2008, Lausanne, Switzerland, February 10-13, 2008, Revised Selected Papers
Constitutes the thoroughly refereed proceedings of the 15th International Workshop on Fast Software Encryption, FSE 2008, held in Lausanne, Switzerland in February 2008.The 26 revised full papers presented together with 4 short papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 72 submissions. The papers address all current aspects of fast and secure primitives for symmetric cryptology and are organized in topical sections on SHA collisions, new hash function designs, block cipher cryptanalysis, implementation aspects, hash function cryptanalysis, stream cipher cryptanalysis, security bounds, and entropy.
Extremum Problems for Eigenvalues of Elliptic Operators
Problems linking the shape of a domain or the coefficients of an elliptic operator to the sequence of its eigenvalues are among the most fascinating of mathematical analysis. In this book, we focus on extremal problems. For instance, we look for a domain which minimizes or maximizes a given eigenvalue of the Laplace operator with various boundary conditions and various geometric constraints. We also consider the case of functions of eigenvalues. We investigate similar questions for other elliptic operators, such as the Schrödinger operator, non homogeneous membranes, or the bi-Laplacian, and we look at optimal composites and optimal insulation problems in terms of eigenvalues.
Extreme Conflict and Tropical Forests
At a time when the international community is devoting significant attention to the issue of governance as a key factor in global environmental decline, this book provides a timely insight into the relationships between extreme conflict, the international trade in forest products, and the social, economic and environmental condition of tropical forests and their human communities. Drawing on the expertise of both natural and social scientists, Extreme Conflict and Tropical Forests explores the underlying causes and the social and environmental consequences of conflict in tropical forest areas. Case studies from Africa, Asia and Latin America present a range of issues – from illicit crops and ‘conflict timber’ production, to the potential of peace parks for improving human security, social quality and biodiversity conservation.
Exchange traded funds : Structure, regulation and application of a new fund class
The organization of traditional mutual funds as Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) produced revolutionary changes in the fund industry. These changes, and the subsequent events to which they led, have greatly - creased the practical way of trading funds. Traditional mutual fund m- kets were fragmented, and transactions were both costly and from time to time difficult to arrange. Investments in emerging markets for example were anything but efficient. As a consequence of establishing ETF funds market segments, the efficiency of transactions has been broadly increased as well as transaction costs dramatically reduced. All this changed in the early Nineties with the introduction of the first ETF for the purpose of trading funds. Exchange Traded Funds – Structure, Regulation and Application of a New Fund Class is a comprehensive summary of articles covering all aspects of the Exchange Traded Fund industry.The present book is divided into four parts: The opening part, containing ETFs – A Leading Financial Innovation and From Continent to Sectors: Challenges and Uses of ETFs in Europe, is - signed to give the reader broad insight into the industry, developments and trends. Further, the article Spiders: Where Are the Bugs? examine the characteristics and performance of these instruments from an academic point of view.
Evolutionary Genomics : Statistical and Computational Methods
This book addresses the challenge of analyzing and understanding the evolutionary dynamics of complex biological systems at the genomic level, and elaborates on some promising strategies that would bring us closer to uncovering of the vital relationships between genotype and phenotype. After a few educational primers, the book continues with sections on sequence homology and alignment, phylogenetic methods to study genome evolution, methodologies for evaluating selective pressures on genomic sequences as well as genomic evolution in light of protein domain architecture and transposable elements, population genomics and other omics, and discussions of current bottlenecks in handling and analyzing genomic data. Written for the highly successful Methods in Molecular Biology series, chapters include the kind of detail and expert implementation advice that lead to the best results.
Evolutionary computation, machine learning and data mining in bioinformatics ; 6th European Conference, EvoBIO 2008, Naples, Italy, March 26-28, 2008. Proceedings
The feld of bioinformatics has two main objectives: the creation and main- nance of biological databases, and the discovery of knowledge from life sciences data in order to unravel the mysteries of biological function, leading to new drugs and therapies for human disease. Life sciences data come in the form of biological sequences, structures, pathways, or literature. One major aspect of discovering biological knowledge is to search, predict, or model specifc infortioninagivendatasetinorderto generate new in teresting knowledge.Computer science methods such as evolutionary computation, machine learning, and data mining all have a great deal to ofer the feld of bioinformatics.
Evolutionary computation, machine learning and data mining in bioinformatics ; 5th European Conference, EvoBIO 2007, Valencia, Spain, April 11-13, 2007, Proceedings
This book Covers brings together experts in computer science with experts in bioinformatics and the biological sciences. It presents contributions on fundamental and theoretical issues along with papers dealing with different applications areas.
Event Structure and the Left Periphery : Studies on Hungarian
This book provides substantial new results in a novel field of research examining the syntactic and semantic consequences of event structure. The studies of this volume examine the hypothesis that event structure correlates with word order, the presence or absence of the verbal particle, the [+/- specific] feature of the internal argument, aspect, focusing, negation, and negative quantification, among others. The results reported concern the telicising vs. perfectivizing role of the verbal particle; the syntactic and semantic differences of verbs denoting a delimited change, and those denoting creation or coming into being; evidence of viewpoint aspect in a language with no morphological viewpoint marking; the aspectual role of non-thematic objects; the source of the ‘exhaustive identification’ function of structural focus; the interaction of negation and aspect etc.
Évaluation des troubles neuropsychologiques en vie quotidienne = Assessment of neuropsychological disorders in daily life
Neurological diseases such as stroke, head trauma, Alzheimer's disease pose a public health problem. They affect all ages, from children to the elderly. They affect the possibilities of autonomy in daily life, the possibilities of social or professional integration. In these pathologies, neuropsychological disorders: disorders of language, memory, attention, etc., are the source of crucial difficulties. Cognitive tests performed by psychologists are essential for their diagnosis, but do not on their own make it possible to prejudge the difficulties encountered by people in their everyday life. This book presents an original approach to neuropsychological disorders, by describing specific assessments describing difficulties in daily life, in order to better understand them and to quantify their impact. The second part of the book develops the consequences in clinical practice in particular populations - children and the elderly - or the social objective of the evaluation, in particular school integration, professional integration and driving. Finally, the relevance of these assessments in the context of recent laws on disabled people as well as the development of compensation for bodily injury after an accident are also discussed.
Estimation of Willingness-to-Pay : Theory, Measurement, Application
To determine the willingness-to-pay (WTP) for products and/or services from a customer perspective is crucial for modern approaches to pricing.With the Price Estimation scene (PE scene) Christoph Breidert introduces a new method to estimate WTP. It works as an additional interview scene appended to conjoint analysis and offers the respondents a dynamically generated sequence of product choices with assigned prices.
Estimates of cost of crime : History, methodologies, and implications
With the emergence and development of quantitative methods in economics and statistics, the exercise of calculating costs of crime became possible, In this book, it's argue that we can estimate costs of different crimes, and that such estimates are relevant for criminal law and crime policy. Notwithstanding the incommensurability of many consequences of crime, society every day makes numerous decisions how to tackle crime, and at least implicitly assesses the relative importance of the problem. Properly done costs of crime estimates make people’s evaluation more visible, and allow for more coherent public policy.



















